


When There's Nothing To Feast On

by commoncomitatus



Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Compulsive Behavior, Gen, Shared Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Post-2x07. Monkey hits things he probably shouldn't hit. Sandy eats things she definitely shouldn't eat. Neither of them asks any questions, and they're both just fine with that.
Relationships: Monkey King & Sandy (The New Legends of Monkey)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	When There's Nothing To Feast On

**Author's Note:**

> Another look into a couple of things I've touched on briefly elsewhere: Monkey's feelings of helplessness following the loss of his staff, and Sandy as a survival-stockpiler who is apparently perfectly content to hoard food she knows to be extremely poisonous.
> 
> AKA, yet another fic in which yours truly spends too much time overthinking and drawing parallels between unrelated plot points.

—

Monkey isn’t — always — as stupid as they think he is.

He doesn’t have the time or the patience for reading books or poring over old scrolls or memorising the ancient language of the gods. That’s all true, but it doesn’t make him stupid.

Really, when you stop and think about it, it actually makes him smarter than the idiots who do that stuff. Because he knows what’s really important in the world, and it’s definitely _not_ that.

The stuff that’s really important — the stuff that actually matters — not even Tripitaka could find in one of her precious scrolls. Useful stuff, valuable stuff, like learning how to handle yourself in a fight, or learning how to recognise when a demon is listing to the left or the to right, what it means when it drops its shoulders or pulls its arm back before aiming a blow. That’s the kind of stuff that’s always going to be important, no matter when or where or all the rest of it; it was important back in the good old days, back when he was the most powerful god on Jade Mountain, and it’s just as important now.

Actually, more important.

Which means he’s really, _definitely_ not stupid.

More like a genius, really.

You know, when you stop and think about it.

Not that they ever would.

Tripitaka, who seems to think that words and language and stuff is the only way to communicate or connect or whatever. Tripitaka, all _you need to understand these things, Monkey_ , and _you need to learn stuff, Monkey,_ and honestly, if he wasn’t willing to kick back and learn that rubbish a million years ago under the Master, he’s sure as hell not about to sit down now and take wordy-word lessons from a human.

Again: he has more important stuff to worry about.

Like saving the world, for example. Like saving it from real, proper demons, like turning it back to the way it was, like undoing all the damage of the last five centuries. Like the stupid quest and the stupid scrolls, and—

He doesn’t need to _read_ the things, just find them.

And since Tripitaka doesn’t stand a chance of doing that without him, who’s the stupid one, really?

Tripitaka and her scrolls; Pigsy and his ‘strategy’.

Or so he likes to call it, anyway. ‘Strategy’, like it makes him some kind of big hero or something, just because he knows what that word means and how to ‘utilise’ it or whatever. Just because he was a general once, for five minutes or five decades or five centuries or... does it even matter, really? Five small and inconsequential time-counts of something, and that’s supposed to mean something? Seriously?

Pigsy thinks he knows everything there is to know about battle strategies and battle plans and all that other boring not-actually-real-battle-stuff nonsense, but where in the seven hells was he when Monkey and his army were laying waste to the Broken Temple?

Sleeping, probably. Or eating. Or playing at making ‘strategies’ when he should have been picking up his weapons and—

Whatever. 

Point is, they talk a lot, Pigsy and Tripitaka. They talk a lot, and they read a lot, and then they talk a lot about how important it is to read a lot. But Monkey knows what’s actually important in this stupid backwards world, and that’s _action_.

And after spending the best part of a week separated from his staff, he is really, _really_ ready for some of that.

*

It’s like the time he lost his hands and had to grow them back.

A little bit different, sure, since his staff was never — technically — attached to his arms or anything. But it’s a whole lot closer to that weird cut-off-from-himself feeling than he’d care to admit.

He knows what Tripitaka would have to say about that if he told her. _You’re being dramatic, Monkey,_ or _don’t be so stupid, Monkey,_ or _it’s just a silly little weapon, Monkey_. Or,the most annoying one of all: _maybe you shouldn’t be so dependent on violence in the first place, Monkey_.

Humans never understand these things.

Pigsy might grasp it a little better, if he had the inclination, but he’s got his own stuff to work through at the moment. He’s had a rough time of it lately, admittedly, what with the whole almost-dying-twice bit and then the getting-recruited-and-seduced-by-a-gluttonous-demon follow-up. He’s really good at that, Pigsy, being fodder for demons and crazy mushroom people to chow down on; if Monkey hadn’t seen his martial prowess too many times to doubt him in that department, he might begin to wonder about the big guy.

Point is, for all of that, he might actually understand — a little bit, maybe, and only in theory — how it feels to have a part of yourself stolen and held captive by a demon.

Only a little bit, though, and only in theory.

Pigsy’s never lost his rake. Even if he did, he could call it back to him with a thought and a wave of his hand. He’s almost lost his head a couple of times, and maybe that’s closer to the same thing — close enough to the lost-hands bit, anyhow — but Monkey kind of gets the impression that’s probably not something he’d want to talk about.

Fair enough. He still hasn’t talked about the lost-hands thing, either. For all the stuff he really doesn’t get about Pigsy, he definitely gets not wanting to make a big deal out of dismemberment and almost-death.

He’s definitely not making a big deal out of losing his staff.

He definitely, _definitely_ hasn’t refused to put the stupid thing down from the moment he got it back.

He’s definitely not having a hard time ‘processing’ or whatever.

He’s just quietly sneaking away from their camp to spend some quality time with it, that’s all. Who wouldn’t, right? Perfectly normal for a god to want to reconnect with his weapon, smashing down trees and bushes and whatever other rubbish he happens across in the nearby forest.

Totally normal, right?

Right?

He knows better than to expect that the peace and quiet will last. If he’s honest, he’s not entirely sure he wants it to.

The others — most of them, at least — are back at camp. When he left them, Tripitaka was busy fussing over Kaedo Zef, back among the living after his brush with fangkris poison and demon indoctrination and whatever else he went through before humiliating Monkey in single combat, and Pigsy was fussing over his precious cooking pot, apparently worried that the stupid thing was traumatised or something by its time under demon occupation.

Monkey, slinking into the forest to spend some quality time with his own formerly-demon-occupied weapon of choice, can’t judge him as harshly for that as he might otherwise like.

Not that he particularly cares who or what his friends are fussing over right now, so long as their attention is on their charges and not on him; it’s a rare blessing that no-one even bothers to ask him where he’s going or why, and he’s thankful for it.

He knows better than to think he’ll get away with it for long: when he left camp, there was an obvious absence among their group, and one who is pretty notorious for showing up in exactly the moments he really doesn’t want her to.

And that—

Well.

What it means is that he’s not surprised — that he’s ready for it, in fact — when he stumbles on her, squirrelled away in the darkest part of the forest.

Annoyed and disappointed, absolutely.

But not surprised, and not unprepared.

There’s a medium-sized bush, greyish-green and delicate-looking, in the middle of an otherwise-dead clearing. He spotted it from about a hundred paces away and has his heart set on smashing the thing to pieces; he’s halfway towards achieving that aim, storming into the clearing with his staff whirling and a war-cry already rising up in his throat when a shimmer of silver-black movement makes him freeze.

Because of course _she’s_ there, ruining his fun like always.

She’s bent over the bush, stripping it down to its leaves and twigs, picking off the small crimson berries one by one and stowing them away in one of her pouches.

Because apparently she’s not had enough of that?

Monkey would be surprised, except he’s really not.

Knowing better than to ever try and sneak up on an unsuspecting Sandy — he still gets headaches from the last time he made that mistake — he announces himself with a loud, deliberately obnoxious cough, and lets his staff fall to his side as he approaches.

“Haven’t you had your fill of berries by now?”

She doesn’t even bother to lift her head, which suggests she knew he was there long before he realised she was. No surprise there, either; he hasn’t been particularly subtle or silent in his trail of foliage-shaped devastating, and she’s more observant than most. Knowing her, she’s been waiting for him to make his presence known for a while now.

“Hello, Monkey,” she says, ignoring the accusation.

Annoyed, he taps the bush with the tip of his staff. “You done with that thing soon? I want to pummel it until it cries.”

If she’s surprised by his thirst for violence — which he strongly doubts she is — she doesn’t show it. She just ponders the question for a beat, then plucks another handful of berries and affirms, “Soon.”

By her definition, that could be seconds or hours.

Monkey’s fingers twitch over the cool surface of his staff. _Patience_ , he tells himself, knowing perfectly well that he has none.

“Those better not be poisonous,” he quips, cocking his head at the offending berries.

It’s meant to be a joke. A weak jab referencing her noxious antics back at the demons’ camp, more to kill time and ease his restlessness than anything else. A joke, a wisecrack, stupid and not particularly funny, but whatever, it’s not meant to be. He’s goofing around, that’s all, but she stops what she’s doing and stares at him like she thinks he’s serious, like he really means it.

Like anyone would believe, so soon after poisoning an entire army of demons with a fistful of berries not unlike these, she would be stupid enough to—

“Only a little bit,” she says.

And that—

Monkey squints, trying to figure out whether that certainty comes from one of their resident wilderness-food experts, or if she really is that stupid. He wants to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she has a guidebook tucked away somewhere, but knowing her as well as he does...

He pinches the bridge of his nose and says, “Tell me you _didn’t_...”

Sandy doesn’t answer, but now that he knows what he’s looking for, he can see it well enough for himself:

Pale. Sweat beading at her hairline. Body held tense. Swallowing too much.

Yep, she really is that stupid. And the more he lets himself think about it, the more he’s really not surprised.

He doesn’t ask why.

Like, he purposefully, deliberately does not ask why. Not because he doesn’t want to know — he’s actually kind of morbidly curious — but because he’s not the stupid, uneducated buffoon that Tripitaka and Pigsy think he is. Because he can see the things they can’t, the things they miss with their heads buried in scrolls and their mouths all full of assumptions. Because he can see the in-between things, and he knows when a story has other, deeper stories hidden behind it.

He knows, too, the places where answers won’t be found by those who ask questions.

So he doesn’t.

Sandy says, not an explanation, just blithely sharing her findings, “Stomach cramps, moderate nausea. Unpleasant, but not debilitating.”

Monkey makes a face. “And yet you’re still cramming your pockets full of the things.”

She frowns. “Of course.”

Like that’s obvious too.

And off she goes, right back to filling her pouch like this is the most normal thing in the world. Like Monkey’s the weird one for deigning to think it’s not.

Monkey stares.

 _Stares_.

But he still doesn’t ask.

Tripitaka would ask, he’s sure. Tripitaka loves asking questions, loves learning things and knowing things and understanding things, all that nerdy geek-monk stuff. She has that annoying thing that book-smart people often have, the thing where she assumes she _understands_ stuff just because she _knows_ stuff. She would ask, but she’d ask all the wrong questions and then assume, because she got some kind of answer, that it’s the one that matters.

But she’d be wrong.

Monkey doesn’t care about knowing stuff or understanding it or whatever else. He sees what’s right in front of him: one of his friends, who just single-handedly laid waste to an entire demon army by filling their bellies with poisonous berries, filling her own pockets with more. Not _as_ poisonous, if her little taste-test experiment is any measure to go by, but apparently not _not_ -poisonous either.

Maybe that’s not a coincidence. But then again, maybe it is.

And those are two very different questions, with two very, _very_ different answers.

He feels it out, testing the waters without asking any of them.

“Tripitaka thinks you’re a genius,” he remarks, all cool and casual and apropos-of-nothing-like.

He has a sneaking suspicion it’s not berry-related, the way she startles and blanches even paler.

“Tripitaka thinks a lot of things,” she mumbles.

Monkey snorts his agreement. “She thinks you planned it,” he goes on, wheedling gently. “Stocking up on those gross toxic things because you figured you’d get the chance to weaponise them against our enemies.”

He doesn’t narrow his eyes, doesn’t flash his teeth, doesn’t let her see how closely he’s studying her right now. He toys with his staff, casual and lazy, like Tripitaka’s presumptions mean nothing to him.

Honestly, they don’t. Any half-wit can tell that she’s way off-base about this — no-one, not even the preternaturally well-prepared Sandy could have possibly foreseen that particular turn of events — but of course this isn’t really about Tripitaka at all, or her blindness to what should be really damn obvious.

He’s offering her an out, is the thing. An end to this whole conversation, if that’s what she wants: _of course Tripitaka’s right, of course I planned it, of course it was on purpose; why else would I be hoarding poisonous berries?_

She doesn’t take it. Doesn’t even think about it.

He didn’t expect her to, not even for a moment.

But it matters that he offered, and he wonders if she would’ve been so quick to shake her head if he hadn’t.

She says, very quietly, “I don’t imagine any of us could have predicted that we’d be conscripted into a demon army.”

“Two demon armies,” Monkey corrects, and immediately regrets it.

He’s wholly unprepared for the sharpness that hits before the words are even full out of his mouth. The burst of anger and frustration, the revenant sour taste of dread, the impotence and bitterness that surges up from his belly: it all comes at him like a tidal wave, powerful and wholly inescapable.

He’s floored for a moment by the weight of an unwanted memory: Tripitaka ordering him to act like a human, to become a human, to be a human. _Make yourself weaker, Monkey_ , she hissed, and _stop being so powerful, Monkey_ , like he—

Like he wasn’t already crippled enough without his staff.

Like he wasn’t already—

His growl, he doesn’t keep to himself as well as he’d like.

Sandy’s brow furrows.

She opens her mouth for a moment, then closes it again.

She doesn’t ask.

Instead, keeping her eyes fixed on the berry-bush, still only half stripped, she says, “I think I’m finished with this.”

Monkey doesn’t let his relief show, but he gets the feeling she sees it all the same.

Well, whatever. So long as he gets to pummel something, who cares if she sees it?

She slinks a careful distance away as he twirls his staff in readiness, tucking the pouch back into her belt and sitting down safely out of reach. Monkey keeps half an eye on her, watching her watching him, showing off a little bit just because he knows he’s got her attention.

Only a little bit, though. It’s instinct that makes him show off, the automatic response to having an audience — however small and however weird — but for the most part he’s just really, genuinely focused on the task at hand: the thrum of power as his staff comes alive in his hands, the way his body and spirit engage and interact with the weapon and with each other, the rush of movement and momentum and—

He wishes he could make it last, the buzz of action and power and strength, the thrill of actually doing something after so much forced passiveness, of being productive by being destructive. He wants to draw it out, the violence and the warm feeling it brings, but delicate little bushes aren’t like demons or gods or other kinds of monsters: a couple of good whacks and then it’s all gone, nothing left but kindling and sad, squished berries.

Sandy’s applause is somewhat more sarcastic than he’d like.

Still, never one to shy away from any kind of adulation, feigned or otherwise, he takes a bow nonetheless, then plonks himself down beside her.

“I really missed this,” he says, not nearly as casually as he was aiming for.

Sandy raises a curious brow, frowning not at him but at the staff still in his hands. He can tell she’s wondering why he hasn’t shrunk it back down and stowed it away as he normally would after using it, but because she’s like him — because she’s _smart_ , because she _gets_ this sort of stuff — she doesn’t ask.

“You missed smashing helpless bushes to pieces?” she presses instead.

Monkey chuckles, bemused. “I missed smashing _everything_ to pieces.”

It’s true enough, and he’s not ashamed to admit it. No more than she seems to be ashamed of the way he caught her in the act of filling her pockets with ‘only a little bit’ poisonous berries.

And that’s another question Tripitaka or Pigsy would ask if they were here: how in the world does she not realise that that’s a weird thing to do?

That one, he doesn’t ask because he already knows.

Because he’s done a few things himself over the last few days that he knows would provoke that exact same question from the little human and the not-so-little former general. Because he understands — better than he’d like any of them to know about — that ‘weird’ is very much in the eye of the beholder, and that maybe there’s logic to her kind of weirdness that the rest of them don’t or won’t or can’t see.

A kind that can’t be forced open by pointless questions.

He holds his staff close to his chest and doesn’t ask.

She eyes him, then it, then shrugs and also doesn’t ask.

Easy. Simple. Just the way Monkey likes it best.

A shared glance, nothing more, and they’re quiet again, seated comfortably side by side, neither one of them expecting or demanding anything more from the other than the friendly mostly-silence they get.

Keeping his staff in hand, extended and ready for action, Monkey stretches out his muscles, itching for the burn of exertion; he feels nothing, of course — as much fun as it is, smashing trees and bushes to smithereens, it’s not exactly a challenge, physically speaking — and he finds himself wishing he could feel it a bit deeper than he does. Wishing too, maybe, that he wasn’t the untouchable super-god he is, just so this fleeting act of violence could ignite his body for more than just a moment.

Sometimes, he thinks, he’s too good for his own good.

He’s been playing the weak, subservient human for too long, helpless and unarmed and bowing his head to stupid demons. He wants something to ground him, something to bring him back to himself.

Beside him, Sandy draws another of her pouches from some hidden place about her person.

“I do have some that aren’t poisonous,” she says, holding the thing out to him with a smile.

Monkey stares at her, then at the pouch.

“Are you _serious_?”

He shakes his head, awed and disgusted in equal measure, because the look on her face is telling him that yes, she really, really is.

Unbelievable, he thinks. But at the same time, coming from her, maybe not quite so unbelievable after all.

He switches tack.

“No offence, Sandy, but after what you did to those demons, I’d sooner starve than eat anything you gave me.”

Sandy’s expression shifts. She’s still serious, as she was, but it’s suddenly heavier, sort of deeper and richer and _more_. Like he’s stumbled by accident into something a whole lot more uncomfortable than stomach cramps or moderate nausea.

“No,” she says, very softly, “you wouldn’t.”

And there: he knows that look, recognises that particular kind of softness. He knows that it’s an answer to a bunch of the questions he’s never going to ask, knows that maybe she’s letting him see it because he didn’t. He knows it’s important, he knows it matters, and he knows better than to push it.

He looks at the pouch she’s holding, at the berries hidden inside. He looks at her hands, shaking ever so slightly, damp palms and little spasms that likely mirror those in her stomach. He looks at her face, pale and pricked with sweat, the ashen tension in her jaw giving away her discomfort.

He thinks about the sort of weirdness that would compel a person to willingly eat poisonous berries, to use herself as a guinea pig to figure out exactly how poisonous they are. He thinks about what might drive a weirdness like that, and he thinks it’s maybe not so far away from the sort of weirdness that would send a different person into a forest to beat the living daylights out of bushes and trees.

He says, thick with understanding, “Huh.”

And he definitely, _definitely_ does not ask.

*

A little bit later, while Monkey fiddles with his staff and ponders who or what to smash to pieces next, Sandy mumbles, “I know it’s not going to happen.”

“Okay.” Monkey doesn’t bother trying to mask his confusion. This, at least, is a question he can ask. “But, uh, for those of us who apparently missed the segue, what the hell are you talking about?”

Sandy is staring at her hands, folded now in her lap.

“Starvation,” she clarifies, barely above a whisper. “Like you said before. I know it’s not something that I— um, that _we_ need to worry about.”

 _Any more_ , she doesn’t say, but Monkey’s not stupid, he’s really not.

He forces a grin. “Not while we have Pigsy around, at least. Right?”

Dismissive, yes, but in a deliberate, calculated sort of way. He’s not stupid, he’s smart, and he knows the look she’s wearing right now: _fear_ , not the primal kind they both felt while Gorm was beating them bloody, but the other kind, the kind he thinks is maybe unique to her. He’s never seen it in another god before, only in humans and the parasitic demon leeches who lived among them back in the old world.

Fear, not of pain or death or getting beaten or battered or bloodied. Fear, the panicky kind that hits her when she’s being unintentionally difficult and Tripitaka just _looks_ at her, or when Pigsy talks down to her because she doesn’t understand something as quickly or easily as she should. Fear, not of the many things she knows she could heal from, but the one thing in all the world she can’t, she hasn’t, she never did.

Rejection. _Abandonment_. 

Even after everything they’ve been through together, the four of them as a team, still Sandy looks at them like she expects them to turn around and throw her away.

Like it’s the only outcome she knows.

It stings, more than Monkey — famously uncaring — wants to admit.

He knows better than to let that show.

Dismissal, carelessness, indifference; a shrug, a grin, a ‘whatever’. That stuff is easier and safer for them both. It gives Sandy room to hide, space to duck her head and disappear in that way she likes to do when she’s feeling vulnerable or scared. And it gives Monkey room, too, to keep his own weaknesses from bleeding through and messing things up. It doesn’t serve anyone, he thinks, for her to assume that he cares.

Even when he actually kind of—

He coughs, for himself, not her.

Sandy startles again, looking up from her hands like she’s only just remembering he’s there at all.

She says again, achingly quietly, “I know it’s not going to happen.”

And he thinks, though he’ll never say it, that maybe she’s talking about more than just starvation.

“That’s right,” he says, keeping it cool, keeping it casual. “It’s not.”

It doesn’t seem to bring her any comfort. If anything, she looks even more uneasy now than she did a moment ago. Barely perceptible, like all her responses, she seems to recoil, like her whole body is struggling to process his words, resisting them even as it knows they’re true; the tension in her jaw intensifies, and she swallows three or four more times. Not nausea or poison-discomfort this time, he’s sure; it seems very specifically aimed at him.

He shifts a couple of judicious hand-spaces away from her, shrugs his indifference, and doesn’t ask.

Her hands shake. She pats down her pockets, her pouches, her belt, like she’s making sure her stuff is all still there, then blurts out, like she can’t hold the words down—

“I don’t know how to stop.”

Monkey lets that sink in.

“Okay,” he says, keeping his voice light and airy, a shrug and a smile but definitely not a question.

Still, though, she continues, just as he knew she would.

“I know it’s different,” she sighs for perhaps the third time, sadder and more ashamed with each one. “We’ve been on the quest together for a long time now. We have Pigsy, who takes care of us and makes certain we always have enough of everything. We have Tripitaka, wise and prudent and clever, who would never let us suffer too badly from anything that might be avoided. We have _you_...” She clears her throat, like she’s not sure how to compliment him, then swiftly moves on. “I can’t remember the last day I had to go without food. I can’t remember the last time it hurt like dying, the last time I was really, truly afraid of...”

This time she doesn’t say the word.

Monkey does for her. “Starvation?”

Her frantic nod, and the way she immediately flinches and ducks her head, breaks his heart a little bit.

“I know it’s safe,” she says again, sort of the same but not exactly. “But for the longest time it wasn’t. For the longest time, that was the only thing I knew. Starvation, pain like dying. And those berries... even the really bad ones, even the _awful_ ones... they would’ve been the difference between surviving and not.”

That’s not hyperbole, Monkey is sure. Poisoning is a nasty thing — even he knows that — but even the very worst kind wouldn’t be enough to kill a god.

The other thing, though?

The _starvation_ thing...

He suppresses a shudder.

“I get it,” he says.

Maybe she believes him, maybe she doesn’t. Either way, she’s still talking.

“It’s different.” Her voice hitches, changing the same words once again into something a little bit new. “It’s better, it’s good. It’s not like that any more, and it won’t... I _hope_ it won’t ever be like that again.”

“It won’t,” he says fiercely, before he can stop himself.

Sandy nods. “I know. I do. But it’s still...” Her throat convulses as she swallows; nausea or raw emotion, he can’t tell and he’s not sure he wants to know. “I can’t stop. Can’t stop waiting for it, can’t stop expecting, anticipating...”

 _Preparing_ , she means, but doesn’t say. Making sure she’s ready.

She doesn’t need to say it; she’s said more than enough already.

A whole lot more, in truth: Monkey’s pretty sure he’s never heard that many words come out of her all at once since they started the quest.

Before then, even. Since they were stuck in Locke’s dungeon and he asked — humouring her, restless as he was — what her story was.

She’s settled down a lot since then. Adjusted, maybe, to having friends other than herself. Nowadays she only really talks when she thinks she has something important to say, when she’s at least mostly sure it’s worth hearing. Possibly that’s another part of her issues, all tangled up with that fear of being kicked off the quest and abandoned again; possibly it’s something else entirely. 

Whatever the reason, on the tail end of those endlessly long days where Tripitaka won’t shut up about the mission and Pigsy won’t stop complaining about everything, Monkey often finds himself thankful for Sandy and her silences.

Not tonight, apparently.

Tonight...

It’s a shift, the sudden talkiness, and really not what he was hoping for when he brought his staff out here for a little private-time and wanton destruction. But hey, plans change, and maybe he doesn’t mind it as much as he expects.

He pats her shoulder — still whipcord-tense; no doubt she’s still feeling those ‘only a little bit’ bad berries — and says, “You know I didn’t ask, right?”

“I know.” Her smile, wan but heartfelt, makes it clear that she appreciates it, that it’s important to her. “But you were looking at me like you maybe wanted to. Like all of you do when I’m doing something that’s not... something that’s, um...”

“Weird?” he offers, nudging her lightly so she’ll know he’s only teasing.

Gentle as it is, it still makes her wince. It wasn’t his intention, but apparently this is another of her old-life wounds that sill hasn’t completely healed yet because she sighs and says, barely audible, “I am not yet so well-adjusted as I think I should be.”

Monkey shakes his head. “You’re doing just fine.”

It comes out automatically, but it also comes really, really easily. He means it, wholly and completely, not just in the simple ‘offering reassurance to the madwoman who knowingly poisoned herself out of fear of something that’s never going to happen’ sort of way. He means it because the god he’s looking at now is a completely different one to the one who chattered aimlessly and played stupid games in that stupid demon’s prison.

She _is_ doing fine. Way better than she likely realises.

Monkey knows from his own less-than-flattering experience that some habits are more easily kicked than others. For himself, he still struggles every day with the ego and arrogance that the Master tried and failed to break him of; he’s getting there, mostly with Tripitaka’s not-so-patient guidance, but it’s still an uphill struggle most of the time. Not his proudest admission to be sure, but hey, it is what it is.

As to Sandy...

The babbling stuff, she lost real quick. The gibberish, the chattering over-compensation for a lifetime without company, all that stuff vanished like vapour once the quest started in earnest, replaced with the shy self-consciousness and pervasive quiet of someone who realises they’re way out of their depth next to their new, well-adjusted friends. A different kind of coping mechanism, probably, but one that Monkey finds a whole lot more bearable when he has a headache.

The harder stuff — the survival instincts, the part where she’s still a little bit scared of daylight and a lot scared of people, the gut-deep fear of abandonment and isolation and starvation — that stuff isn’t quite so easy to shake.

He knows.

He really, _really_ knows.

He knows—

Not like Tripitaka, all book-knowledge and scroll-knowledge and thinking that means real knowledge. Everything she knows is spilled out of ink and onto parchment in old dead languages. She looks at Sandy — and at Monkey sometimes, too — and she probably thinks she understands all their complexities and weirdnesses because she read some stupid scroll once that talked about the effects of some blah-blah-blah on some or another whatever.

She knows stuff, Tripitaka. But she doesn’t really _know_ stuff.

Not in the same way Monkey and Sandy know stuff. Not brain-thinking but soul-thinking, not book-learning but life-learning, understanding that comes from experience.

Sandy pulls out another one of her pouches. She turns it over in her hands, again and again and again, like she’s nervous, like she needs to do something to keep from losing it.

Like Monkey, clutching and squeezing his staff, trailing his fingers over its surface, keeping it close, holding on like his life depends on it, like all of their lives depend on—

“I have enough to survive a week,” she says, not looking at him.

What she doesn’t say — what Monkey thinks he hears anyway, guided by the look on her face, a little bit of pride, a little bit of shame, and a lot of confusion — is, _I used to have enough to survive a month_.

He doesn’t say, _that’s progress_.

He doesn’t ask how hard it was.

He says, “Sandy, no-one cares what you keep in your pockets.”

He knows it’s the right thing to say. He’s smart, he _knows_ —

Still, it’s more of a relief than he’ll ever admit when she laughs.

*

They move on.

Another clearing, this one a little bit less dead. There’s a bunch of trees on one side for Monkey to smash to pieces, a bunch of new heavy-laden bushes on the other for Sandy to fill her pockets, and plenty of space between them so they don’t annoy each other too much.

He blocks her out as he goes to work. One tree felled, another shattered, and a third cleaved neatly in two. They’re down in less than three seconds, the bark stripped clean and the branches all stacked up to make firewood.

One, two, three. Quick, effortless, useful.

He doesn’t feel it in his muscles, but he feels it in his head and under his hands. The hum and crackle of power from his staff, the thrill of connection where he holds it, the unique oneness with everything around him that hits only in moments like this, the whole world coming alive in a thousand new colours as he slashes, spins, and strikes.

Everything is how it should be. The trees seem to shrink and turn in on themselves as he approaches, their leaves twitching and trembling as though with fear. And why wouldn’t they be scared: he’s unstoppable!

This is what he needs: action, physicality, just a touch of violence. To be _himself_ again, to feel his staff and its power as part of him, its movement like his own breath, his own heartbeat. To fight enemies he can tear apart without a thought, enemies he can beat without effort, without even taking a hit, without getting knocked down or knocked back or—

Or—

He freezes mid-swing.

His back blooms with phantom pain. His chest—

Why can’t he _breathe_?

He goes down, hits the ground in a sort of awkward half-crouch. One hand on the forest floor, the other holding his staff out in front of him. Fully extended, ready for anything, ready to protect him and those around him, ready to fight to the death if he has to.

Against what, he has no idea.

But he’s definitely not thinking about trees any more.

He tightens his grip, adjusts his position.

Power vibrates up and down his arm, from himself and from his staff.

His _staff_ , back where it should be, safely in his hand.

He breathes again, in and out, slow and steady, slow and steady, slow, and—

“Monkey.”

Sandy, standing above him, seemingly out of nowhere — only he’s pretty sure it’s not really out of nowhere at all; he knows he’s not being subtle just as well as he knows she’s not stupid — and staring at him like she’s trying to figure out whether or not she should be speaking at all, whether her presence is a welcome distraction or an unwanted reminder that his weakness — his least favourite thing — is very much on display.

Monkey doesn’t insult her intelligence by trying to smile, but he doesn’t shoo her away, either. He grunts, not trusting himself to move, and says, “Your bushes giving you trouble?”

The air shifts a little, chilling his bare arms as she sits herself down beside him. He can’t tell if she really believes he’s crouching there by choice or if she’s just pretending to think that so he won’t be embarrassed; either way, just like he never asks the questions that would make her uncomfortable, she doesn’t press this either.

He’s given her an out; this one, for him, she takes:

“I’m done with them,” she says, hands and eyes dropping to her belt. “If you still want something to smash to pieces.”

“Tempting.” He raises his head, gets a close look at her ashen face. “How are those berries sitting?”

“Badly.” Said with detached indifference, like a little ‘moderate’ poisoning really is a small price to pay for keeping her pockets full and her irrational fears assuaged. “But they’re not dangerous. If I needed—”

She stops.

The heat that floods her face — embarrassment, humiliation, self-directed anger — is a welcome sight after the sickly pallour. Monkey lets it sit for a beat, watching her shaking hands, watching as she bites her lip to keep from apologising, possibly realising he’d never allow such a thing. It’s stupid, Monkey thinks, to be ashamed of an instinct that kept her alive for so much of her life, stupid to try to apologise for things that haven’t hurt anyone.

Well, no-one who wasn’t a demon that deserved it.

He says, without subtlety, “You want to watch me pummel those stupid bushes, then?”

She shrugs, too casual. “If that’s what you need—”

Again, she stops.

It’s not for her own sake this time; he can tell by the way she blanches, the flush of self-loathing and shame draining away in favour of discomfort and dread.

She looks stricken, staring at him with a queasy, wide-eyed sort of panic, like she’s terrified she just crossed some invisible line, terrified that she said something completely and utterly unforgivable.

Like she’s terrified, even now, even after all that ‘I know it’ll never happen’ stuff, that he — that _they_ — will throw her off the quest and dump her on the side of the road, alone and abandoned.

Again.

All because she said the wrong—

No.

Because she said the _right_ word.

She swallows a couple of times, then corrects herself a little awkwardly: “I mean, um, if that’s what you _want_.”

Like his ego is so fragile.

If she were one of the others, maybe. Tripitaka, with her stupid humanness and her stupid books and scrolls, the way she always assumes she knows better than him even when it’s _about_ him. Or Pigsy, pretending he doesn’t care but still sticking his nose into everyone, thinking his opinion is worth more than theirs just because he used to be a strategy-brain general or whatever.

It’s easy to get defensive around them, easy to let his ego speak louder than it probably has any reason to. They’ve got all these presumptions about him, all these dumb ideas about the way he thinks and acts, the way he _is_ ; he doesn’t want to prove them right or anything — because they’re really _not_ — but sometimes it’s just too much hard work to try and prove them wrong.

Sandy doesn’t have any presumptions about him or anything else. He wonders sometimes if maybe there’s nothing between her ears at all, only water and mist and confusion; she’s happy to see herself as stupid or senseless or whatever, happy to assume she knows nothing about anything, happy, most of all, to sit there and wait in the dark for some prophesied little human to come along and explains it thirty times.

So when she slips and says _need_...

When she catches herself, wide-eyed and panicked, and amends to _want_...

That’s not presumption, and it’s not thinking she knows stuff she doesn’t.

It’s not like Tripitaka, it’s not like Pigsy. On them, that look means judgement, it means presumption, it means looking into places they have no right to see. It means _questions_.

On them, yes. On Sandy...

Sandy doesn’t think that deep. If she’s seeing it, that means that it’s obvious.

As in, really, _really_ obvious.

He sighs and grits out, “Need is fine.”

And Sandy’s whole body unclenches.

“Okay,” she breathes.

It’s not the comfort it should be, watching her relax, knowing that his concession made it happen. It doesn’t cushion the blow of being so obvious that even she can see through him, that even she is able to recognise the hunger in him, the urgency, the need to reconnect with himself after being so vulnerable for so long. It’s no comfort at all that she probably sees it because she knows, because she _understands_ , because it’s not so very different from her berries, her pouches, the things she needs but doesn’t need.

It’s no comfort at all, knowing that she gets it.

Her eyes are on her hands again, hovering over her belt, and when Monkey lurches to his feet and swings over to the bushes, staff at the ready to inflict mayhem, she doesn’t mention how stiffly he moves.

He’s not stupid enough to think she doesn’t notice.

He’s really not stupid enough to think _she’s_ stupid.

She’s not, for all that she likely doesn’t believe it herself. She’s soul-smart, like Monkey is, not brain-smart, the kind of smart that probably looks like stupidity to scroll-studying geniuses like Tripitaka and quick-thinking strategists like Pigsy. Their kind of smart, Monkey and Sandy, comes from seeing, not from thinking or knowing or asking stupid question.

Smart like—

Like the way she has to notice that his form isn’t perfect as he whales on the stupid bushes, like the way he knows she sees the laziness of his stance, the sloppy slowness of his strikes. She’s a fighter like him, fists always clenched; she has to notice the flaws, however tiny, just as he would.

He knows she sees. But she — like he — doesn’t ask.

There’s four of the little bushes, all clumped together like a single twitching entity. He could easily lay waste to them all at once if he wanted — one long sweep, boom, dead — but doesn’t. He goes at them like he went at the trees, one at a time, blow by blow, tearing them to pieces like he would if they were real enemies.

If they were—

 _Real_ enemies, the kind that quake and shake when he hits them, the kind that collapse and go to pieces when he uses just the right amount of strength or power, when he swings his staff just so or extends it to exactly the perfect length.

 _Real enemies_ , the kind that actually _die_.

Not like—

His roar as he smashes the last one to the floor — anger, he tells himself, and definitely not the other thing — rouses a family of birds from their slumber; they cry out too as they take to flight, a flourish of movement and discarded feathers against the darkening sky. A shriek, a clamour of chaos and sound, and then they’re gone, in search of safer places to nest and rest.

Sandy, pretending she’s not actually watching him, doesn’t ask.

She says, with faint bemusement, “It carries more power if it comes from your stomach.”

It takes him a moment to realise she’s talking about the shout.

And possibly, in her shy, not-really-sure-what-she’s-doing sort of way, offering to talk about it.

Monkey rolls his eyes, biting back the urge to bare his teeth and snarl.

“I trained for a thousand years under the greatest gods who ever lived,” he reminds her, without humour. “And you think _you’ve_ got something to teach me?”

Sandy shrugs, unoffended. “Just some friendly advice.” Then, with such impressive subtlety he’s actually taken aback, “Perhaps you were simply distracted and momentarily forgot your many years of training?”

It’s a good tactic, mostly because it makes him want to smack her instead of the thoughts whirling uninvited through his head. No doubt she has some practice in making herself into a tempting target.

“The Monkey King doesn’t forget,” he snaps, and hates how true that is.

Sandy doesn’t let him dwell on it. She smiles, all knowing and secretive, and Monkey knows he should hate that too, but he kind of doesn’t. 

“Ah,” she says, clearly needling him on purpose. “So it was a creative decision, then? Not one I would’ve chosen, but if it works for you...”

She’s messing with her pouch again, head bowed, so his glare is wasted.

He stomps back over to her, throws himself down without ceremony and shoots back, “I’m going to assume you’re just being contentious right now because _your_ stomach is still upset about the rubbish you put in it.”

Sandy draws herself up, but doesn’t deny it.

“ _My_ stomach knows how to make a battle-shout count for something,” she drawls instead, though her still-miserable expression says it has no intention of doing anything of the sort. “It’s not my fault _yours_ was banqueting when it should have been joining the rest of you in training.”

He does smack her for that, a playful little crack to her side with the leaf-littered end of his staff, not intended to cause any real discomfort.

“What’s the matter?” he teases, an unsubtle but much-needed change of angle. “Jealous that I know what actually edible food looks like?”

“Oh, yes. Dreadfully so.” There’s an edge to her voice, though, that doesn’t quite match the playful words, and one that only grows sharper when she follows with, “And of your tendency for distraction.”

She’s still not asking. But she‘s insufferably good at _not_ asking.

She’s also got that too-pale look on her face that says maybe—

Monkey shows all his teeth, a grin that’s a little more than just that. “Is this your way of saying you need a distraction yourself?”

He could give her that, if she did. 

Easier by far, opening himself up under the guise of helping her out. Giving her the distraction she clearly needs, something to take her mind off her sour stomach and her stupid decisions, turning the spotlight back onto her survival instincts instead of his own, blurting out his truths for her sake, out of kindness: not because he needs to talk it through but because she needs a distraction and doesn’t particularly what kind he picks.

After all, she never _asked_.

She still doesn’t, even now.

She just says, exaggeratedly rueful, “I may have been a little bit optimistic when I said ‘a little bit’.”

Monkey snorts a laugh. It feels good.

“Okay,” he says, slinging an amicable arm over her shoulder. “Since apparently you need me to save you from your self-inflicted misery...” And he looks her right in the eye and winks. “You want me to show you something special?”

Her expression turns dubious, then suspicious. “Depends on what it is.”

“Something I’m going to make you swear not to tell the others about.”

She blinks a couple of times, then narrows her eyes like he’s just threatened to do something utterly unspeakable. “That’s not making me _more_ inclined to want to see it, Monkey...”

“Yeah, it is,” he wheedles. 

He moves fast, before she gets the chance to emasculate him further. Still grinning, he reaches up behind his ear, fiddles with his hair a little, just for show, then slowly draws out—

“A _twig_?”

She is, if possible, narrowing her eyes even more.

Monkey huffs and says, with absolute, dead-eyed seriousness, “It’s not a twig.”

It is, actually. But it’s also something else. And that is the important part.

Sandy, blinking like she’s just been clocked in the head, says, “I’m confused.”

If he knows her even half as well as he flatters himself he does, that’s probably the understatement of the century. Even on her good days, Sandy struggles with basic comprehension, and that’s without stomach cramps and moderate nausea or whatever muddling things even more. She’s not stupid, no more than Monkey is, but her particular kind of not-stupid is so far away from what genius types like Pigsy and Tripitaka would call ‘smart’, it often looks a lot like she is.

To them, at least. To Monkey...

Well, there’s a good reason she’s confused right now.

Because he wanted her to be.

It’s a plain, unassuming thing, the little twig he’s twirling between his fingers, small enough that he can hide it behind his ear without anyone even knowing that it’s there. It’s pretty sturdy for such a small thing, but still delicate enough that he can thread it easily through his fingers whenever he gets restless or bored or—

_—anxious, worried, scared, helpless—_

Or bored.

Of all his companions, he knows that Sandy would understand this. He’s seen the way she plays with the knife on her belt or the string of bones around her neck, the way her hands twitch when they’re empty, the way she’s always touching something, fiddling with something, holding something. He’s seen her and he knows that she’d get it, but he still doesn’t say the words.

Doesn’t want to admit out loud, perhaps, that there are some parts of her weirdness that aren’t so very far away from his own.

He threads the little thing through his fingers now, lightning-fast and effortless, showing off simply because he can. It keeps him grounded, keeps him from thinking too hard, makes it easier to look at her and keep that ever-important grin on his face. Eyes fixed on hers, he watches the way she’s watching him, biding his time until she’s so entranced by his flying fingers and the little bit of wood that she’s all but forgotten there’s anything else in the world. Biding his time until she’s transfixed, enraptured, hypnotised, until—

Until he’s sure she won’t look at _his_ face, sure that she won’t be able to see the sting he can’t hide, the way it cuts through the grin when he opens his mouth and confesses—

“It’s my staff.”

If she was confused before, she’s hopelessly flummoxed now. It’s a comical thing, the way her eyes widen to saucers, the way she stares at the dancing twig and then turns to frown at his real staff, still clutched tight in his other hand, extended and ready for action because he still can’t bring himself to shrink it down and put it away, because he still can’t—

She says, hilariously predictable, “I’m _very_ confused.”

It wrenches a chuckle out of him, makes things easier.

Monkey takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes, threads the thing between his fingers a few more times, letting the rhythm of motion anchor him and hold him steady.

“After I lost it,” he explains, slow but not stupid-slow like how Pigsy gets sometimes when he’s talking to Sandy and thinks she wouldn’t understand if he spoke normally. Careful-slow, slow for his own sake, not hers. “After that stupid demon... _Gorm_...”

He can’t say it.

Sandy tries to help. “After he stole it and beat us senseless?”

It’s the worst kind of help, the kind that hurts but is needed.

Monkey fights back the urge to flinch. He sighs, he swallows, he squeezes his staff to remind himself that it’s there, it’s real, it’s _his_ again and back where it should be. Then, summoning all his remaining strength, he nods.

“Up until the day they locked me up in that stupid mountain,” he says, still speaking slowly, “I was never without it. Not for a day, not even for a minute. And then that stinking, stupid demon came along and just...”

His throat clenches; his hands twitch. Between his fingers, the little twig threatens to snap.

He slips it back behind his ear, worried that he’ll break the stupid thing by accident, and goes back to playing with his real staff, the full-sized, perfect, proper one.

 _His_ , and he will never let it out of his hands ever, ever again.

Sandy watches him. His twitchy hands, his loose wrists, the taut muscle of his shoulders and arms. Studying, examining, scouring, she watches every part of him except the one that matters: his face.

"I see,” she says, very quietly.

By all accounts Monkey shouldn’t believe her. He hasn’t even said anything, really, and certainly not the kind of stuff that would lead to understanding or knowing or _seeing_.

But then, Sandy has never been the sort to respond to normal methods of communication, and the sad-soft-thoughtful look on her face tells him that she’s speaking the truth.

She sees. More than he’s said, more than he’ll likely ever say, she sees it all.

It’s a relief, but it’s also not.

A relief, because he’s nearly as uncomfortable with words as she is. A relief to not have to try and talk through all the churning discomfort, the horror of how it felt to be without his staff, that extension of himself, his power, his strength. A relief to not have to twist those stupid, clumsy words around his tongue — the only part of him that isn’t always completely perfect — and try to wring an explanation out of himself, a story that makes sense, that isn’t stupid, isn’t senseless, isn’t—

 _Weird_.

That’s supposed to be her thing. Sandy, with her well-known weirdness, her stupid habits that don’t make sense. It’s her thing, the stuff that makes no sense, not his.

And yeah, there’s some small relief in not having to come out and paint himself in the same colours, to not have to say the words aloud and thus make them inescapable, to turn all that just-in-his-head stuff something solid and real and true — _I needed to hold it, I needed to believe, I needed to pretend, I know it’s stupid, I know it is, but I needed it!_ — and seal his shame by hearing it out loud.

A relief, in many different ways, to be seen without being heard.

But then, on the other side, even without being heard, to be _seen_.

In all his stupidity, all his humiliation, all his moments of weakness and weirdness and being like her.

To know that she sees it all, that she knows, that she understands.

He hates that it makes it easier, hates that it also makes it harder.

He’s the Monkey King. He’s supposed to be untouchable, unbeatable, and unafraid of anything. Bad enough that he let himself get caught off-guard by some stupid, worthless demon in the first place; bad enough that he lost the fight and lost his staff and lost the stupid scrolls as well. Bad enough that the whole thing left him beaten and weakened, bad enough that it left him _helpless_...

It’s not like the dumb twig is even anything special. Sandy was right about that: it really is just a twig.

But he was pummelled and humiliated, shaken down to his bones. He was on his back, Sandy on her front, the two of them battered and brutalised. Them wounded and winded, Pigsy maybe dying, and Tripitaka useless with tears.

He had to—

He needed to be the Monkey King.

He needed to get better and get up.

Even when it was the last thing in the world he felt like doing. Even when he wasn’t even sure he could do it at all. He had to find a way to get back up, to keep going, to—

To _pretend_ , even if it wasn’t real.

He had to—

He snatched it off the first tree he could find, the first thing he saw when he lurched to his feet and his eyes refocused. A tiny, quivering, useless little twig, but at least it was something he could hold, something he could twirl between his fingers to calm and soothe himself, slip behind his ear or into his hair in a vague approximation of his hairpin-staff, a cleaner, less demon-tainted version than Hagfish’s stinking fake.

A tiny stick of wood, nothing more, but he took it and held it and made it his, and when the despair dug its claws into his throat he could close his eyes and pretend it really was _his_ in all the ways that mattered.

It kept him together in the awful minutes — hours — that followed Gorm’s assault. It helped him to stay focused, to remember what was needed and how to do it. Threading the thing between his fingers to distract himself from the pain in his back, the moans and sobs and silences of his friends, the awful horror in the pit of his gut as he remembered that his real staff was gone.

He held the silly thing in a death-grip, clutching and clinging to it like a lifeline while his back shrieked and protested every movement he made, while Sandy groaned and claimed there were three of him, while Pigsy lay still and silent as the grave, while Tripitaka sobbed and begged and pleaded with him to _do something, Monkey, please do something, please, please, please_...

A pretence, that was all. The illusion, in a moment of pain and helplessness, of being as powerful and whole as he once was. The illusion, as everything fell apart all around him, of things being simple and normal and under his control.

Stupid.

He knew it then, and he knows it now.

 _Stupid_.

But what else did he have?

He’s the Monkey King. He can’t afford to be helpless or weak or fall apart. He can’t afford to be disarmed and beaten, can’t afford to be in pain, frightened, lost. He had to do something, had to find something, had to hold on to _something_ —

Sandy, drawing him back to the present, smiles sadly and says, “You didn’t need it, but you did need it.”

And she touches her pockets, her pouches, the secret places where her survival instincts are hidden, and she doesn’t say anything else but she doesn’t need to.

Monkey watches her. Shaking, twitching, shuddering; her hands look like his insides feel, feverish and desperate.

He sees things too.

He nods, returns her smile, and says, “Yeah.”

*

He doesn’t smash any more trees, and she doesn’t strip any more bushes of their fruit.

They sit there for a while in mostly-silence, him polishing his staff until it gleams and her counting and recounting her newly-gathered supplies; she has to know by now, exactly how many berries and nuts and whatever else she’s got, but still she keeps going, over and over and over again, until the repetition makes him want to scream.

He doesn’t. He knows perfectly well that he wouldn’t stand a chance on that particular score, that she has just as many good reasons to yell at him in turn. His staff was polished to a perfect shine before he even started, after all, but he — like her — keeps working on it just the same.

It’s pointless, his endeavours just as much as hers are, and if she has the compassion not to call him on it, he figures he owes her a little of the same in kind.

To take his mind off the pointlessness — no: to take his mind off the fact that it still brings him comfort even though he knows it’s pointless — he cuts her a sly sideways look and bares his teeth in a grin.

“If you breathe a word to the others about any of this,” he warns her, all exaggerated faux-cheerfulness, “the next time I need to practice, I’ll use your head instead of a tree.”

Sandy grunts her acknowledgement. “And if _you_ tell them about _this_ —” The hand she uses to gesture at her belt is unsteady; Monkey pretends not to notice. “—I’ll put the bad ones in your breakfast.”

He doesn’t need to see the stony look on her face to know she’s serious.

That also brings him some comfort, sort of, because he was serious too.

He doesn’t say any of the things he’s thinking, any of the things he knows she’s probably thinking too: _they’d ask too many questions_ , or _they’d try and make us talk about it_ , or _they’d make it stupid and messy and weird_.

Like it’s not stupid and messy and weird enough already. The great sage equal of heaven, reduced to playing with a silly little twig to keep himself in one piece.

He knows it’s weird. He knows it’s stupid and messy and all the rest. He doesn’t need Pigsy laughing and smirking to drive home the first part, he doesn’t need Tripitaka getting all human and worried to drive home the second, and he really, _really_ doesn’t need the two of them double-teaming him to ‘talk about his feelings’ to drive home the third.

What he needs is what he has here: time spent reconnecting with his staff — the real one, of course, but maybe also the stupid, pointless fake one too, the one that’s still tucked neatly behind his ear even though he doesn’t need it any more — and a companion who has her own weird-stupid-messy stuff to work through too, a companion who is smart in the same way he’s smart, the way that doesn’t _ask_.

Her hands are shaking as she fusses with her pouches.

His fingers are twitching where he’s holding his staff.

Sandy’s face is still too pale, greenish with the ‘little bit’ of poison and its ‘moderate’ nausea. Monkey knows that his face is probably flushed red, hot with the still-thrumming urge to do violence, to pummel something, to—

She doesn’t ask. Neither does he.

He says, with all the apropos-of-nothing subtlety of a thunderbolt, “I’m hungry.”

Sandy blanches a couple of shades paler. “I’m sure Pigsy’s working on the evening meal,” she manages weakly.

“I hope so,” Monkey says, snickering. “Smashing trees really builds up an appetite.”

“Mm.” This, approximately half a syllable, she grits out through tightly clenched teeth. He’s lucky that she knows only he’s teasing, or he suspects he’d be on the receiving end of a well-deserved face-punch right about now. “You can have mine, if you like.”

He laughs harder at that. _If you like_ , as if he can’t see she’s whiter than death just thinking about it.

As if she can’t see, too, that for all his teasing he’s not actually exaggerating about his own hunger.

He wonders how many times he’s missed it, in the months they’ve been travelling together. How many moments just slipped under the radar without him ever suspecting a thing.

It’s not unusual, now that he thinks about it, for her to turn down breakfast or lunch or whatever else; it’s not unusual for her to look under the weather in the evening or morning. It’s _really_ not unusual for her to wander off into the forests or fields by herself and return looking unsteady but definitely calmer. How much of that so-called ‘quiet time’ was spent restocking her little survival stash right under their noses? How many of those miserable-looking moments were _this_ , ‘a little bit’ of poison here, a bout of ‘moderate’ nausea there?

Should he have noticed, he wonders. Should he have looked harder? Should he have—

He knows the answer: _no_.

He knows, because he’s not the only one who missed stuff, and she’s not the only one who prefers to keep her weird little habits to herself.

How many times, after all, did she miss the just-as-obvious signs in him? All those totally-subtle moments when he was pretending to check his hair and secretly making sure his staff was where he’d left it. All those too-casual moments he spent practising and playing with the thing, twirling it and whirling it, smacking the nearest solid object — or sometimes Pigsy — for no apparent reason, simply because he could. All those silly little moments that meant nothing to them and everything to him.

They both missed a lot, he sees now.

The others, quite probably, still do.

They’d both like to keep it that way.

All of this they’ve shared and communicated together. All of this they’ve worked through in tandem without any stupid questions, with scarcely any talking at all.

Could Tripitaka do that, Monkey wonders, or Pigsy, or the Master or the Scholar or any of those other studying-learning-reading types?

It’s all there, right on the surface, even the stuff they never said and never will. It’s all there, and Sandy doesn’t need to hear him pour his guts out about Gorm and his broken back and his feelings of helplessness and all the rest, and Monkey doesn’t need to hear her pour her guts out literally, talking about all the times she had to swallow poison or die. It’s done, the spoken bits and the unspoken bits, and that’s all they need.

None of Tripitaka’s head-cocked interrogations. None of Pigsy’s raised brows and muttered ‘hmph’s, no presumptions, no demands, no questions. Just Monkey and his staff, Sandy and her pouches, and they don’t need to make it into some great complicated learning-stuff _thing_ , they just know, they just understand.

Because they’re smart.

In the important ways.

And that’s enough.

Monkey says, cool and casual and as calm as he can get, “You got some of those not-poisonous ones to keep me going until dinner?”

And okay, so maybe that is a question, sort of.

But it’s also really, really not.

It’s _I get why you do this weird stuff you do_ , and it’s _I know that you get the weird stuff I do sometimes too_. It’s _I trust you not to poison me like you apparently poison yourself_ , and it’s _I get why you do that, even when I don’t really understand it_ , and it’s _I trust you to see the parts of me that need sustenance of all kinds, even if you don’t really understand that either_.

Mostly — and most importantly — it’s _I’m hungry and I know you’ve got food, and it doesn’t need to be any weirder or messier or stupider than that._

It’s a question, but it’s also really, really not.

And when Sandy replies, smiling and shaking her head with queasy fondness, it’s not an answer to the question, it’s a mirror for all that other stuff.

“I do,” she says, reaching for her belt with suddenly steady hands. “I have plenty.”

Monkey grins, shrinks his staff down to its smallest size, and silently puts it away.

—


End file.
